


If This Is Our Last Night

by Carapatzin



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Can't Lose You, Contemplation, Emotional, F/M, Finn Lavellan, I Have a Thing For Elves, Internal musings, M/M, Nanyehi Lavellan, Palla Cousland, River Hawke, Romance, Shesi Mahariel, angsty fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 14:37:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4063657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carapatzin/pseuds/Carapatzin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thedas is a dangerous world.  There is no guarantee that any of the heroes will make it through the year, let alone the next day.  These are the thoughts their lovers might think, when they're holding the heroes late at night and praying they won't lose them.</p>
<p>Emotion, angst, and five little vignettes.</p>
<p>Multiple Wardens, and Multiple Lavellans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If This Is Our Last Night

Alistair knows this could be the last chance he sees her, but _Maker,_ he wishes it wasn’t this way.  Anything to guarantee one more day with her, anything to protect her.  But he can’t, because she’s more stubborn than a mule digging in its heels, and there’s no way she’d let _him,_ Ferelden’s newly elected King, face down the Archdemon.

 

But she’s going to be his wife.  His _Queen._ Shouldn’t he have a say over her?  Something?  But he never does, not when she gets it into her head that she can save the world herself.

 

It’s a quiet night in Redcliffe Castle.  Eerily quiet, like the whole world is sucking in a breath and waiting for the exact moment to blow everything apart.  The eye of the storm, this.  Or the eve of it.  Alistair lies there on the bed, crossing his arms behind his head, looking over at her.

 

Her hair itself is like a firestorm, all vivid hues of cinnamon and vermillion and flashes of golden red.  But it’s soft, perfectly brushed, because she’s a Cousland and she knows how to take care of her hygiene.  He runs his fingers through it, noting how her hair feels like silk against the war-roughened skin of his hands.

 

She rarely knows when he watches her like this.  She gets awfully sleepy, and she slumbers like a rock.  Sometimes he jokes that he could pick her up and throw her, and it wouldn’t even wake her up.  She thinks it’s funny.  He loves that she finds his silly humor funny.

 

He loves everything about her.

 

And she could die when they march on Denerim.  She’s stubborn enough to stand right under the Archdemon’s gaping maw and take the final blow for everyone.  He thinks back on meeting her, on realizing it was them against the world, on falling head over heels for this woman.  He thinks of her bright laughter, her grin, the way she playfully smacks his shoulder and the way it never _ever_ is hard enough to hurt.  He thinks of the light in her seaglass eyes.  He thinks of _her._

 

He won’t wake her up to tell her he loves her.  She needs her sleep.  But he’ll think it, as hard as he can, until he succumbs to sleep as well.

 

* * *

 

Zevran can barely stand the waiting.

 

He knows the waiting game all too well.  The adrenaline of making his way towards a kill, the stress of hoping he doesn’t get caught, the rush when he does the job right because he’s _skilled._ He knows patience, because he’s an assassin.

 

And he knows death.

 

He knows the feeling of plunging his dagger deep into someone’s flesh, knows intimately the sounds of tearing sinew and muscle and skin, the cracks of breaking bone, the gurgles that bubble out of a man’s lungs when he dies.  He knows the subtle perfumes of each toxin, knows the sting when he accidentally gets some on his hands.  He knows the cold, ferocious glint of each of his daggers.

 

_She_ taught him _life,_ and he doesn’t know that quite as well.

 

She’s like a breath of clean forest air – lively, exotic, just the right amount of peace.  Her hair reminds him of it too, dark brown and tangled into twining braids that almost always have a twig or a leaf stuck in them.  It makes him laugh, that she never notices these things in her hair.  And her _vallaslin,_ grey as a stormy winter sky, always reminding him that she is of the woods, that she’s a wild thing, that she’s as fast and deadly as he is.

 

Her head is on his chest, and she’s asleep, and his fingers skim over her bare back, feeling her soft, dark skin.  He loves being close to her like this, when there’s nothing between them, when her skin is pressed against his and he can feel each of her heartbeats.  It’s often the only way he knows how to show love, and she understands it, and he knows it’s often the same for her, too.

 

She could die, when they reach Denerim.

 

He can’t forget that.  It’s a needle in his heart, a knife in his back, a constant ache in his chest.  After all this, after coming so far, after finally loving again, he could lose it all.  And he can’t accept that.  He’s lost like this before.  And he _will not_ go through it again.

 

She’ll be angry, he knows, when she can’t force him out of harm’s way and protect him.  She might yell.  She might get that feisty flash in her jade green eyes and shove his chest and try to push him away.  He doesn’t care.  He can handle her anger. 

 

The only thing he can’t handle is her death.

 

But he won’t let it happen.  He’ll be here to the end.  He’ll fight at her side, like he’s done for the last year, like he desperately wants to do for the rest of his life.  He’ll stand beside her, and if she falls, he’ll fall with her.

 

He holds her a little tighter, reassuring himself that no matter what – in life or in death – nothing can keep them apart.

 

* * *

 

Fenris secretly hates how Hawke throws herself into battle.

 

He admires it, too, because who couldn’t admire the way she fights, the graceful way she dances across the battlefield, the silvery shine of her daggers as she plunges them into enemies before they even see her coming.  She’s skilled; he knows that.

 

And yet he hates the reckless abandon with which she does it.  He loves the lively glint in her deep, peacock-green eyes, and yet he hates the fear that grips him, that twists his belly into knots and tightens his throat.  He hates not knowing if she’ll make it out alive, if that one blow will be the one that connects, if he’ll turn around and watch her body crumple to the ground like broken glass.

 

These thoughts are morbid ones, he knows, and yet he can’t stop them.

 

She likes to sleep with her back to him, curled up and hugging a pillow, and he’s fine with it – he likes to drape an arm around her and hold her, and he likes to wake up first and have the first thing in the morning be the feel of her warm body next to him.  It’s funny, she always says, that he can somehow breathe with her hair constantly in his face, but he doesn’t mind it, because she always bathes with sweet soaps and they smell like _her,_ and it comforts him when he sleeps.

 

He doesn’t sleep well.  He’s awake now, his hand on the swell of her hip, his nose buried in her hair.  Her hair is black as fresh pine pitch, black as a starless sky, and this time it smells like lavender.  She’s gotten used to him moving around in the night, and she doesn’t blame him for his restlessness.  She _understands._

 

Sometimes it’s hard for him to admit that he needs her, but he does.  Desperately, with everything he has.

 

And her generosity could get her killed.

 

The Templars pull her from one side, the mages from the other.  Selfish, everyone is selfish for relying on her to stand in the middle of two tidal waves as if she could prevent them from crashing down.  She’s only human.  She’s only one woman, a woman he can’t live without.  Is it selfish of him, then, to want to yank her out of the way and keep her safe, let the two tides crash into each other?

 

He doesn’t care.

 

But that’s her, and she wants to fix everything, and he doesn’t have the power to take her away.

 

He wants to protect her.  He throws himself in front of her whenever he can, to divert the blows, to prevent the pain.  She chides him for it, sometimes, but he knows she loves him for it all the same.  It’s a strange feeling, being loved.  And it’s strange to love in return.  But he does.

 

She could die tomorrow.  She could die any day.  And he knows any blow that takes her down will kill him just as thoroughly.

 

* * *

 

Dorian panics easily.

 

It’s a part of being Tevinter, he thinks.  No reserves in war, no reserves in love.  And so when he does allow himself to love, when someone actually breaks through the walls and the shields, he relinquishes his whole heart and loses it to them.  He used to think it’s a weakness, but the man lying on top of him like a sleepy, immovable sack of flour always says it’s a _gift_ instead.

 

He thinks it’s funny, that this crazy elf likes to sleep like this, sprawled between Dorian’s legs with his head on his chest and his white, fluffy hair tickling Dorian’s skin.  He thinks it’s equally funny that the much smaller man gets so _heavy_ when he sleeps, like he gains thirty pounds of deadweight.  Secretly, Dorian likes that, likes the feeling of being somewhat crushed; it makes him feel secure.  Loved.  Wanted.

 

What Dorian very much doesn’t like is this fear.

 

He hates worrying.  He hates thinking he’ll hear the worst news possible one day, that he’ll be forced to walk this world alone.  Even though he’s done it before, even though he’s spent years building up walls and perfecting his shields and deflections, he knows he can’t do it again.  Not after loving someone like this.  Not after having his best friend and the love of his life ripped from him.

 

Maybe it won’t happen.  But Dorian doesn’t necessarily think that way.

 

He jokes.  And his favorite elf always smiles at the jokes, with a twinkle in his ice-blue eyes and a cheeky grin that makes Dorian’s knees weak.  Dorian jokes to ease the pain, to pretend that everything will be all hunky-dory, that nothing bad could ever happen to him.  He jokes so that no one suspects he could have a sappy, aching heart under all that bravado.

 

He jokes to see that smile.

 

It could all end in an instant, in a heartbeat.  Corypheus will not wait forever.  The monster will come bearing down on them soon, to kill them all, to tear the world asunder, and yet Dorian knows only one small flickering life in all this madness is enough to tear _his_ world apart.

 

On nights like this, Dorian rolls over and pins him to the mattress and kisses him until neither can think or breathe and _loves him_ , because that’s how he distracts himself.  And both men are fine with it, always, and Dorian never gets any flak for showing love with his mouth and his hands, because both men understand.

 

That’s what he does now.  And he feels a smile against his mouth, his favorite smile, and he presses their bodies together, losing himself.

 

It could end so quickly.  And he could never be prepared for it.

 

* * *

 

Cullen prays a lot.  More so now than he ever has before, because he has so much to lose.

 

It’s worth mentioning that he prayed a great deal after his mind was tortured in the takeover of Ferelden’s circle, ten years ago.  He prayed a great deal when he saw Kirkwall’s knight-commander steadily going insane, steadily turning the city into a bastion of slaughter and misery and heartbreak.

 

But he prays the most now.

 

She feels so small in his arms when she sleeps, so delicate.  He knows she’s not, that she only _feels_ that way because she’s elven and he’s human, that she’s made of tough stuff and doesn’t break easily.  But he holds her tight anyway, because it makes _him_ stronger.

 

He’s lost a lot over his life.  At one point, he might have counted his sanity among those losses.  But he’s sane now, because of her, because she stands beside him and strengthens him and loves him for everything he is and everything he can be.

 

She gets cold at night, and she likes to sleep under a mountain of blankets and furs, tucked against his side and swallowed up by the covers.  He often feels her heartbeat, fluttering like a hummingbird’s, but it’s strong even so, and it reassures him.  He feels the strongest when he holds her, and he wonders if he could ever rebuild himself if she was no longer there to hold.

 

That’s what he prays for, now, always – her safety. 

 

Maybe it’s futile.  She certainly wouldn’t agree with his methods, because she doesn’t even believe in his maker, because her gods are elven, because she’d rather rely on her own steel will and her own strength.  But he’s always left back at Skyhold, always wondering if _this time_ she won’t make it back alive, and even the tiniest niggling thought of it is almost enough to break his heart.

 

He strokes her red-wine hair as she sleeps, smoothing it, comforting himself.  He meant what he said that one night, the first night they made love – that he’s never felt anything like this.  Never before has his heart threatened to beat its way out of his chest so often, never before have his hands ached so badly to touch and his arms to hold.

 

He loves her, and he loves her strength, and he’s terrified to lose her.

 

Maybe they never would have met, had she not gotten the green scar on her hand; maybe they still would have.  Even so, he almost always wishes it gone.  It draws the enemy’s attention to her, makes her a target, and he can’t stand that.

 

If he could hold her here forever, he would.  But morning will come, and she’ll rise, and strap on her armor, and be gone again for who knows how long.

 

And he’ll walk down to the altar near the garden and pray for her once more.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (This is also found on fanfiction.net under the same name.)


End file.
